By Deborah Mary Sophia
(Reuters) -The pressure is on Amazon.com to deliver on lofty expectations for cloud computing in its fourth-quarter results on Thursday, after Microsoft and Google’s lackluster reports jolted investor faith in Big Tech’s billion-dollar investments in AI.
Shares of major tech companies surged in the past two years on the belief that massive datacenter needs for artificial-intelligence technologies would power investment for years.
But that was before Chinese startup DeepSeek said it had achieved AI breakthroughs at a fraction of the cost, precipitating a selloff in technology stocks that some say was overdue.
Still, Amazon may be better positioned than rivals to capitalize on cheaper AI, analysts say, due to its massive cloud business and lower exposure to costly large-language models that power apps such as ChatGPT.
The company is also set to release its long-awaited, and delayed, Alexa generative artificial intelligence voice service, according to three people familiar with the matter, and has scheduled a press event for later this month to preview it.
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world’s largest cloud services provider, is expected to post its strongest revenue increase in eight quarters at 19.3%, according to data compiled by LSEG.
But Microsoft and Meta were both forced to defend their AI spending plans last week, and shares of Google-parent Alphabet slumped 8% on Wednesday after it said it would be spending more on capex than analysts anticipated.
“Microsoft and Google results have put even more of a microscope on Amazon’s cloud growth,” said Dave Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, which holds shares in all three technology companies.
“But if Amazon can crush it on their cloud numbers, the market’s going to absolutely love that report.”
The company was the first big cloud provider to embrace DeepSeek’s AI models last month and has said its capital spending, mostly on AI, would be more than the $75 billion it estimated for 2024.
Slowing growth at Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, the second- and third-biggest cloud players, has sparked some caution from analysts about AWS’ performance.
“Microsoft said it was capacity constrained, Google said it was capacity constrained. More than likely, Amazon is going to say it may have been capacity constrained as well and that’s why its growth rate isn’t quite up to what the market may have expected,” said Bob O’Donnell, chief analyst at TECHnalysis Research.
Some analysts see the weakness at rivals as a sign that Amazon may have caught up in the AI race through efforts including doubling its investment in Anthropic and offering a wide selection of AI models on its cloud platform.
